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Jmk

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  1. I've tried analyze.com before and I've no idea what it's supposed to do. But those same figures show up when you try it on an emulator. Well, E3, E7, EB and EF are the 4 extra 16K banks available in the 130XE. From that, I would guess that you have a fault in the upper 64K of RAM. This would suggest that your first 64K is fine, which is hard to believe as hardly any games (certainly the original games) used the upper 64K... If your chips are socketed then you could swap the first 64K over with the second and either end up going straight to the memory test or you could get a useful result in Super Salt. But they probably aren't socketed... As I'm not an Atari expert, I'll leave it to others to comment before I suggest you break out the soldering iron. ---------- The left (outer) 8 chips (U16-U09) hold the first 64K of RAM, which Super Salt says is OK. The right (inner) 8 chips (U33-U26) hold the second 64K of RAM. (Although other motherboards with a different number of RAM chips were used). Here is a terrible table, which I believe was accurate for my 130XE (but is not 100% confirmed): 1st 64K 2nd 64K Bit Held ============================ U16 U33 Bit 7 U15 U32 Bit 6 U14 U31 Bit 5 U13 U30 Bit 4 U12 U29 Bit 3 U11 U28 Bit 2 U10 U27 Bit 1 U09 U26 Bit 0
  2. With my RAM-troubled 130XE the red blocks stayed up, so you don't have to worry about missing them when you're not watching. Note that there are two BIOS versions of the memory test. The earlier one just tests the first 48K (it shows 48 blocks on screen) and the later one tests the full 128K. If you have the earlier BIOS then it is possible to pass the memory test with bad RAM higher up. If you can, download this, get systest.atr and put it onto a disk or use a SIO2SD/PC cable and run CPS SUPER SALT: Link Run it like this: LOA SUPERSAL.COM This has a rather good RAM tester, although it will only check the first 64K of memory. If you're having non-128K software problems then something should still show up.
  3. I used 64kx1, a mixture of KM4164B-15 and HM4864-3. Things seem to be holding up, perhaps the chip wasn't seated properly?
  4. OK, everyone, thanks for all the replies. I don't have any other Ataris to test the chips with, I broke (and fixed) the bypass capacitor connected to U33 (which I now think is the bit 7s of the upper 64K). I don't think anything else is broken, although my problems initially came via the cartridge slot, so who knows. I assume the new RAM chips are fine, as I've just bought them (although that's not 100% guarantee). Regarding the old thread, I had looked at that but everything had been about testing the number of banks above 64K, not the integrity of the bottom 64K/128K. But... I had another look and there was one thing there that did what I wanted: SUPERSAL.COM (for the lower 64K, at least). It told me that bit 6 was suspect in the range $6000-$7FFF, so I swapped U15 with U32 and it reported the lower 64K as all working. I swapped the upper set of chips with the lower set of chips and tried again - all OK... This was a bit surprising, because it naturally contained the chip that was causing the problem before... however, it seems to be holding for now. Fingers crossed that it stays that way! Thanks for all the help.
  5. Hi, I have a 130XE that now has seemingly endless RAM problems. It is the early type with 16*8K chips in it. I ended up desoldering the 16 chips, putting in sockets and then having to replace all 16 chips with new ones. I broke one of the capacitors, so replaced it with a 104 ceramic disk type I found lying around. Now... things just aren't running quite right. Stuff that needs 64K RAM is a bit unreliable and the built-in memory test is only covering the first 48K... I don't have one of those SALT cartridges that I have read about. Additionally, the memory test does report the odd error in the 6th square after the machine has warmed up for a while. Arghh! If anyone can help with the following question, I'd be grateful. 1. Do the squares in the built-in mem test actually an invidual K within the machine (e.g. does the 6th square actually cover addresses 0x1400-0x17FF)? 2. Do each of the chips cover 8K of the RAM space, or is it set something like 1-bit per address per chip? 3. Therefore, can I figure out which chips are bad using the built-in mem test? 4. Was my choice of capacitor OK? 5. Could I have done something else, like bad soldering that could be to blame for the results I'm seeing? 6. Is there a really, really good piece of software I can use (with an SIO2PC cable) that can identify all the problems and make me a cup of mocha at the same time? Thanks!
  6. My top score is about 53,000,000 now. That includes having thousands of workers, the maximum number of fields and huge amounts of goods being shipped. It just seems to take too long to get a good factory setup before you run out of time.
  7. Hi, I like this game, but is it possible to get the 500 million? I ask this because I am finding that I have to spend a long time selling stuff. So long that the palette-swapping screensaver kicks in and won't switch off until I leave the menu! I put the emulator up to maximum (1800%) but it still takes a long time to sell off thousands of goods. Is there a key to speed up the buying and selling of lots of items? Thanks.
  8. Excuse me while I bump this old thread... I see I'm not the only one disappointed with the gameplay of the 65XX versions of Gauntlet (C64, Atari-8, Apple 2 - although I've never seen the NES version). I prefer the gameplay of the Spectrum and MSX versions. I admit that they're not arcade perfect, but they've been designed in a way that's fun to play - it all comes down to the collision and movement system. On the 65XX versions you trigger a rigid animation that walks you from one square to another. Think Sword Of Fargoal. When you try to shoot through a diagonal gap it doesn't always work, an annoying problem that should apply to the Warrior only (although preferably not at all). Top it off with the slowness and you can't help but be disappointed. So, in an unusual step, I decided to do some experiments with a... CoCo2. The AI, despite being simple, takes up a significant percentage of your CPU time when you've got loads of them active at once. Add that to the rendering time and you have one slow game. I don't know how a 0.9Mhz 6809 compares to a 1.78Mhz 6502, but ideally you could do with double what the sub-1Mhz 6809 has to offer. Sorry, this post is quite dull...
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